Fuji-shi

In the latest Population Census the population is about 245,000 (245,392 in 2020). Over the five years from 248,399 in 2015, it fell by something over three thousand. It is a city on the scale of Numazu in the eastern part of Shizuoka Prefecture, and what we should note here is that, while it has begun to decline, the slope is not as steep as neighboring Numazu’s.

The number of children is thinning faster than the total. Those under 15 fell by nearly three thousand, from 33,258 (2015) to 30,431 (2020). In the same period the share aged 65 and over rose from 25.8% to 28.2%. However, the household-with-children share is 22.7% (2020), higher than Matsumoto’s 20.7% and Numazu’s 17.6% seen so far, holding a thick child-rearing layer among the three coastal cities. The Official Land Price for residential land is around 57,000 yen per m² (56,700 yen). The Fiscal Capacity Index is 1.00 — a self-reliant fiscal structure that covers standard expenditure with its own tax revenue alone, almost without relying on the local allocation tax. The Childcare Waitlist is zero (2025). Why these numbers take this shape cannot be read without going back over the history of Fuji’s water and the paper industry.

Fuji’s skeleton is drawn upon one resource: Mount Fuji’s underground water. The fine and abundant water welling from the Mount Fuji system, and the geography of Suruga Bay and the Fuji River, have nearly decided this city’s character. In the Edo era, the Tokaido Yoshiwara-juku flourished as a base for the Mount Fuji pilgrimage, and from the upper reaches of the Fuji River to the southwestern foot of Mount Fuji, the hand-making of "Suruga washi" paper was carried on, and that paper circulated widely to Edo. What economic geography calls a "resource-located industrial agglomeration" is this city’s foundation.

The modern paper industry grew large from here at once. In 1890, Fuji Seishi set up a factory at Iriyamase and produced Western paper for the first time in Fuji. The next year it is said to have succeeded, for the first time in Japan, in producing domestic groundwood pulp, and Fuji became the birthplace of the modern paper industry. From the 1890s into the 1900s, paper factories gathered around the "Gama" of Imaizumi and elsewhere. The same condition — the abundant water indispensable to making paper — drew factories one after another.

But that agglomeration also bore a price in the postwar high-growth era. With air pollution, water pollution and foul odor from the paper factories, Fuji was for a time even called a "department store of pollution," and the sludge pollution of Tagonoura Port became a social problem. The city overcame it with pollution-prevention agreements and regulation. And even as of 2020, forty-nine paper companies and fifty-nine factories locate in Fuji, accounting for about thirty-six percent of the nation’s toilet-paper production, going on being the "City of Paper." Fuji’s water called paper, paper bore pollution, and the city went beyond it to go on being the city of paper — this rise and fall of industry is the very shape of the city.

What characterizes Fuji is that, while the total population falls by something over three thousand and the number of children falls by nearly three thousand, the household-with-children share is 22.7%, the highest of the three coastal cities. Even though both the total and the children have entered a phase of decline, the thickness of the child-rearing layer in the city as a whole is kept — these two are not a contradiction but can be read as the consequence of an industrial city going on holding a working generation constant.

The Childcare Waitlist has become zero. Here a care is needed: this zero cannot be read the same as neighboring Numazu’s zero. Whereas into Numazu’s zero may be mixed the share by which children suddenly thinned, Fuji keeps its household-with-children share high at 22.7%, and there is a strong aspect of a zero by which supply has been made to catch up while demand stays constant. Even the same "zero waitlist" reads differently depending on whether the child-rearing layer behind it is thick or thin. The number of children decreases, yet the household-with-children share is thick, and the fiscal capacity holds at 1.00 — the structure of the industry of paper-making having kept the working generation and the tax revenue in the city flows beneath these numbers. The numbers, by themselves, do not fix their meaning.

Fuji holds several functions of its own. One is the group of paper factories located by drawing the underground water of the Mount Fuji system, still inscribing into the urban area and the coastal area its character as the "City of Paper" that produces over a third of the nation’s toilet paper. Another is the history of having been the Tokaido Yoshiwara-juku, a base for the Mount Fuji pilgrimage, where the geography of the Fuji River and Suruga Bay gathered the functions of highway and port in this land.

Fuji’s Fiscal Capacity Index of 1.00 can be read as the consequence of this industrial agglomeration. It is precisely because paper-making and its related industries have kept the working generation and the tax revenue in the city that it has a self-reliant fiscal structure covering expenditure on its own, almost without relying on the local allocation tax. From the hand-making of Suruga washi to the birth of modern paper, through the overcoming of pollution to the city of paper — the condition of "a land blessed with Fuji’s water" has swapped different forms of paper-making onto itself in each age. The hand-making, the Western-paper factories, and the factory groups after overcoming pollution all stand, in the end, upon the same condition of abundant water. From the hand-making of Suruga washi to the birth of modern paper, through the overcoming of pollution to the city of paper, only the form of the paper made has changed in each age, against the partner of Fuji’s abundant water. Where the hand-making craftsmen once stood, factory groups that cover expenditure on their own now line up.